Sweet basil and the bee: Doesn't your life need the beauty of food?

Strolling past a perfectly sensuous tumble of just-ripe apricots at the Thursday Night Market, I was smitten by the scent. Hanna picked two for us to eat as we wandered, and I noticed how four of my five senses were fully engaged by this small golden orb I held in the palm of my hand — scent, vision, taste, and feel. All the more reason to dread the future of food as envisioned by Rob Rhinehart, a 25-year-old Silicon Valley entrepreneur and inventor of Soylent. A food substitute, Soylent shipped its first 30,000 units of commercially made product to customers two weeks ago, and is being dramatically heralded by the press as "The End of Food." The story, by Lizzie Widdicombe in the May 12 issue of New Yorker magazine is food for thought.

"Food was such a large burden." Rhinehart told New Yorker reporter, Widdicombe. "It as also the time and the hassle. We had a very small kitchen and no dishwasher." Attacking food as a engineering problem, Rhinehart, who studied electrical engineering at Georgia Tech saw that "you need amino acids and lipids, not milk itself. You need carbohydrates, not bread." Delving into nutritional biochemistry, Rhinehart came up with a list of nutrients necessary for survival, and ordered them off the internet in powder or pill form.

Blended with water and oil, the mixture is smooth but grainy with a "yeasty comforting blandness." Kind of like taking sips from a bowl of watered-down pancake batter according to Widdicombe. Drinking Soylent was saving Rhinehart time and money — his food costs dropped from $470 per month to $50, and physically, he reported, "I feel like the $6 million man. My physique has noticeably improved, my teeth are whiter, my hair thicker, and my dandruff gone."

The antithesis to the farm-to-table and slow food movements as well as the ingredient-obsessed craziness of foodies, and anything natural, fresh, or organic, synthetic food is an example of the concept of "lifehacking," a Silicon Valley cultural export that devises tricks to "streamline the obligations of daily life, thereby freeing yourself up for whatever you'd rather be doing".

Marketed to cubicle workers who crave efficiency rather than the elderly, middle-aged dieters or muscle-building men, the idea of Soylent is you can live on it alone — it's not just a supplement. The company, funded by a crowd-funding internet campaign as well as Silicon Valley venture capitalists, has $10,000 in new orders coming in very day and is becoming profitable. Rhinehart has a bigger goal in mind though. Eventually he would like to source all of Soylent's ingredients from a "superorganism" strain of algae. "Then we won't need farms or factories to make Soylent"

Makes you think about how much time in each day is spent planning, preparing, enjoying, and cleaning up after meals; how much time is spent growing and distributing food, and how many health problems might be resolved by eating exactly what we need to survive, and according to Rhinehart, thrive, rather than eating for pleasure and entertainment. Easy to ship and preserve, Soylent would mitigate starvation in drought-stricken areas. It might be useful in space travel, and it might be our food of the future, as crops begin to be affected by climate change. Bottoms-UP! I'm going to the kitchen to make a rhubarb cobbler and think about life without the beauty of food.

This is an easy cobbler to put together and it suits a wide variety of fruits. I ended up with 8 cups of rhubarb and the 1 cup of sugar was just right. It left the rhubarb tart — a nice counterpoint to Shubert's Vanilla Bean ice cream. If you feel 1 cup of sugar to 4 ? cups of fruit is too sweet, use a couple of tablespoons less, keeping in mind that rhubarb is wicked tart.

Ingredients:

Servings: 4

4 1/2 cups rhubarb, cut into 1/2-inch pieces

1 cup sugar

Grated lemon zest

? teaspoon salt

? teaspoon almond extract (optional)

Cobbler Topping:

1 1/4 cups flour

3 tablespoons sugar

1 tablespoon baking powder

1/4 teaspoon salt

1/3 cup cold butter, cut into pieces (no subs please!)

1 egg, beaten

1/2 cup half-and-half cream or 1/2 cup full-fat milk

Directions:

Set oven to 375 degrees F. Grease a 9-inch baking dish.

Mix the rhubarb and 1 cup sugar, lemon zest, salt and almond extract and place in the baking dish.

Add to the dry ingredients; stir with a fork to create a stiff batter.

Drop by spoonfuls on top the rhubarb/sugar mixture in the baking dish (does not have to cover completely).

Bake for 35-40 minutes.

Serve warm topped with ice cream.

Restored by the comforting smell of cobbler in the oven, here's another Food of the Future news item: 27 year-old Luke Saunders of Chicago has created a vending machine that sells exclusively organic, restaurant-quality salads and snacks called Farmers Fridge.

"The machine resembles something out of a "Portlandia" sketch. Made from reclaimed wood and surrounded by real plants with a carpet of artificial grass leading up, the kiosk is stocked at 10 a.m. every day with an array of fresh salads and snacks consisting mainly of organic, locally grown produce and assembled at a nearby kitchen just hours before. Whatever is left at the end of each day is donated to a local food pantry," according to Joseph Erbentraut for the Huffington Post, Feb. 7.

Inspired by the lack of fresh food available when he was travelling for business, Saunders decided to take matters into his own hands. "My realization was that I could make fresh food and put it in a vending machine without adding any preservatives or other junk and it would taste good," he said. "We want everything to be in the running for 'the best salad I ever had' or 'the best blank I ever had.' If it's not that good, we're not going to put it in there."

There are enough varieties of salad to eat a different one every day of the week and not feel like you're in a rut. Packaged in recyclable plastic jars that allow the ingredients to be stacked in an order that keeps everything fresh: greens on top, cheeses and water retaining fruits on the bottom, nuts in the middle, the jars sell for $8 each, $7 for the daily special.

The diverse menu features savory salads, citrus salads, proteins and sides each about 500 calories, with names like "The Junk Food Eraser," a detox salad made with kale, quinoa, sprouts, fennel, blueberries and pineapple with a cider vinegar dressing on the side. You can also order proteins — lemon-pepper chicken, tofu, tuna or salmon as a side for about $2 each.

As of Feb. 7, the only Farmer's Fridge kiosk was located at the Garvey Food Court, North Clark Street in Downtown Chicago, but Saunders anticipated opening a new kiosk every day from Feb. 13 onward.

Does the food live up to the hype, Erbentraut wondered? He visited the kiosk at 1:30 p.m. and found it half sold out, although it had been restocked earlier during the lunch hour. He chose the "Free Radical Assassin" antioxidant salad, "packed with greens, berries, almonds, flaxseed, goat cheese, carrots and a white balsamic vinaigrette. Each ingredient was crisp and fresh, tasting exactly how it should. At 299 calories, the salad more than satisfied a hearty, Midwesterner-sized appetite — especially when compared to the single cheeseburger with a nearly identical calorie count being sold at the McDonald's next to the kiosk."

This is an idea that's easy to love — I hope it spreads to California.